within the realms of the gods
by reminiscent-afterthought
Summary: The tale of a prosperous city protected by the Gods that had grown too greedy, of a demon king who waited patiently to destroy the world, and a guardian who remained the light of hope even in the darkness of the rest of the world.


**A/N:** This turned out to be quite interesting. The last round of the YGO Contest, Season 12, and the pairing is Messiahshipping (Pharaoh Atem x Horakhty). So, for whatever reason, my brain decided to write a Leviathan era fic, so that's what we have. The legend of Atlantis somewhat rewritten. Enjoy!

* * *

**within the realm of the gods**

Long ago, before Atlantis became a legend lost to the sea, it was a prosperous place protected by the Gods. Or so it was said, and believed. The sky God, Orisis, protected the mountains to the north, where the clouds from other lands rolled past. It greeted ships with lightning, it was said: lightning that drove away any approaching army and lead any innocent voyager astray in the sea. In the south, it was the God-solider, Obelisk, who stood: the protector who had, once, sheared the land from its oppressive neighbours, giving Atlantis its freedom. Now, Obelisk protected the south: protected those high peaks and, beyond them, the deep cliffs that only the mindless monsters of the sea dared to approach.

And then, where the people dwelled in the villages within valleys, they had their sun God, Ra: that light in the sky between the two mountain peaks that separated them from the rest of the world.

And, isolated from the rest of the world and its troubles, they grew. Grew out of sight, away from evil and protected, always protected, by their Gods. No matter who looked towards them, they were protected. They were safe. They could grow and live happily and die fulfilled, forever.

Or so they had believed. And so they didn't learn of the evil sneaking upon them until too late. Because the Gods that protected them weren't unknown to other kingdoms, and many looked hard for a way to bypass that protection. Because only flightless tales told them of what beauty and wealth lay within the protective circle of the Gods, but logic and greed and desire all said that whatever protected so fiercely must be worth that protection. And so they searched. They tried. They watched other kingdoms try and fail.

Except one: a king called Zorc. He simply watched, waited until a power that could tear down the barrier of the Gods would come. He did not fancy risking himself before he had to…but then, he was a very old king, who remembered the time Obelisk had struck that land away from his own. He knew his own power was no match for the Gods at this point. He also knew that, with the Gods removed, Atlantis would be his again.

And so time went on like that: kingdoms watching, waiting, trying…and Atlantis living on inside their little bubble. But then one day the sky exploded. No-one could explain why, but it rained little red stones everywhere…including Atlantis. And its people came across those stones and gained knowledge that hadn't previously been accessible to them before, and civilisation flourished even more potently than before.

Atlantis changed. People lost the light of their souls. Became greedy. Became monstrous. Within a few years of Dartz' coronation, he witnessed people change into horrid beasts and be killed. The rest of them prayed to their Gods, hoping that they would show them mercy, show them a way to escape the tragedy beginning to bloom.

But when his own wife Iona transformed before his very eyes and attacked him, he killed her and his own hope in those Gods. He turned to the largest of those stones that had fallen from the sky, the stone they called the Orichalcos stone, and begged for its guidance. And, unlike the silent Gods, it spoke to him. It offered him a way: gave him soldiers immune to whatever evil swept through their land and bid him to resurrect a great beast that would burn the evil from their lands.

Even though it would burn the good as well, Dartz accepted it. Because a new world, free from evil like the old Atlantis he had so loved, would be born in its place. And so Dartz took those soldiers and attacked the monsters his people had become, and the ones that stood in his way. He offered their misguided souls to the Great Leviathan. And, eventually, he made his way up to the three shrines of the Gods: in the north, south and centre of Atlantis respectively.

He had planned on destroying those shrines, but he misjudged his people. Those who still blindly believed in the Gods were there, praying. His soldiers went for them, killed them and offered up their souls – except one man from each of the three, the temple's guardians, who those soldiers could not beat.

They stood upon the altar of the Gods and they glowed: the tall boy with hair of gold in Ra's temple with his thick strong sword, the brown haired boy with a stern face but just eyes with Obelisk, and the smaller boy with sun-kissed skin with Orisis. They angered Dartz with their stubborn refusal to abandon the Gods and accept the Great Leviathan that would save them. Eventually he struck all three of them himself with new magic from the Orichalcos stone, and they were forced into dragon shapes and sealed in ice.

But, during that struggle, his father: Ironheart the old king of Atlantis, and his daughter Chris, had fled into the mountains of Orisis. There existed one of the gateways to another world, and he opened it, begging the help of those who lived on the other side. They accepted his plea and a woman wrought in magic emerged with an army flanking her, and went to each of the temples in turn and awakened the dragons trapped there. They awoke – but too late. The Great Leviathan had awoken as well, and Atlantis exploded into a long and bitter war: the army from the other world against the soldiers that had come from the Orichalcos stone, and the three dragons of the Gods' temples against Dartz and his Leviathan.

It should have been an easy battle for Dartz: he had beaten the guardians of the temple once before, but then the Gods broke through the barrier that had kept them – a mix of power from the other world and the guardians' faith. And the Gods attacked as one: a great phoenix that knocked the leviathan down, down into the depths of the ocean it had once been sealed within, before the Gods faded away. And the three guardians knocked down Dartz – but not before he froze two of them in ice again: an ice the magician from the other world this time could not melt.

But she was able to restore the remaining dragon, the guardian of Orisis: Timaeus, back to his human form before she departed. And she left one from her own world with him: a magician she claimed older and wiser than her, that would hold the sinking Atlantis up from the ocean deeps.

And the magician did so, standing upon the ruins of Ra's temple with Timaeus, Ironheart, Chris and a few refugees they had led to escape: all that remained of the people of Atlantis. But the leviathan that had threatened to drown them all was now gone: they had another chance with Atlantis, with life.

Timaeus left it up to the others to revitalise the world. He was a protector, and nothing more. He devoted himself to searching out all those red stones he believed were the evil that had destroyed them, and tossing them into the ocean's depths. And once that was done, he set about rebuilding the temples of the Gods.

He had only rebuilt one upon the ruins of Ra's when the sun vanished from the sky, and he realised their ignorance once more. The Gods had exhausted themselves against the Great Leviathan, and their powers which had protected Atlantis from the outside world were now gone. And evil growing outside their lands had grown without restraint: those lands they had not looked towards, forgetting the rest of the world.

But Atlantis had not been forgotten by that world. Zorc had seen the protection of the Gods fade and made his move: cast off the innocuous skin and taken his true, demonic, form. And it was so sudden, so violent, that no other kingdom had been able to stand up before getting swept away in his darkness and destruction. And that destruction spread.

And then Zorc struck the last land in the world, that Atlantis that had never seen it coming until too late. The land crumbled like butter under his strike: magic thousands of times more potent than the magic loaned to them from the other world. The magician fell. Atlantis began to sink into the sea with its people, and Timaeus crawled to the altar he had resurrected and was cast on it into the sea.

He bobbed up and down, sobbing, losing his sword in the waves, and seeing the destruction the rest of the world had suffered beyond their gaze. Despair descended: strong, undiluted despair – but he hung on still, hung on to the altar that was the only hope he had left, the only hope he'd ever had. The reason he'd chosen to be a guardian to the Gods, why he'd chosen to pray to them instead of flee or abandon them, why he'd chosen to isolate himself from the growing society in Atlantis and stay within the unchanging temple walls. He believed in them faithfully, and even with the world as it was he believed that, if there was any mercy to be had in their nest of sins, the Gods would hear his plea and answer him.

So he stood on that altar and prayed to them. All three Gods: Ra, Obelisk and Orisis. He prayed for them with the weight of all of those poor lost souls of Atlantis at his back, and all those other souls in the world he had never looked towards until that moment. He prayed from the bottom of his heart for some light, some hope, some way to save the world from the destruction of that monster king called Zorc that now approached. He prayed for a miracle.

And a miracle came. The altar he floated with lit up, and the place where the statue of the God should have been had he reached that point in his repairs became the ends of a gold, light-made flowing gown. Timaeus looked up, and that gown led to a chest-plate, and gauntlets, and wings on the body of a woman unlike anything he had ever seen before.

_No_, he realised. She was not a woman, not even from another world like that magician. She was like Ra and Obelisk and Orisis as they had appeared to aid them against the Great Leviathan, but brighter. She was a God.

'I am Horakhty,' she said, her voice soft and musical but echoing powerfully across the dark waters and freezing Zorc in his tracks. 'Your prayer towards your three Gods and your powerful desire to protect this world have reached me from the higher heavens.'

Timaeus stared at her, the rest of that dark world he floated in fading into her light. 'Can you save this world?' he asked.

'Our powers depend on the hearts of those who are alive,' she replied. 'From the heart of one man alone, however strong, I cannot destroy that demon who approaches: the accumulation of darkness and greed and despair.'

Timaeus sunk to the floor, that despair he'd pushed aside with his hope growing stronger. If the demon could not be destroyed, what could be done? There was no-one left but him. And one person, however strong…

'Give life back to those who have lost it so meaninglessly,' he begged. 'Give us another chance to fight against this evil.' A chance they may have had, but had never taken.

'You have had a chance,' Horakthy said, gravely, 'but I can give you another, and if your heart stays this faithful, and strong, however many more it takes for that evil to be defeated.'

Timaeus pushed himself up, struggling against the weight of the darkness in the world and the light of the God above him.

'I will stay close to this world,' she continued, and the light grew brighter, until the darkness could no longer be seen, nor felt. 'With your soul, which has called me here.' She looked down toward him, her expressionless face absorbing his sight. 'Guardian, what is your name?'

'Timaeus,' Timaeus replied, 'Guardian of the Temple of Orisis.' He flushed as he spoke; it seemed disrespectful somehow, to say so in front of another God. But that was his name: the name he'd been given long ago when he'd first taken up his task. The name before, the name he had been born with, had been lost then.

But Horakhty seemed to smile. 'Orisis is fortunate to have a guardian like you. And I will share with him…but as my guardian you will need a new name: Atem.'

'Atem,' the guardian repeated, standing straight in the light of Horakhty.

'Yes.' Horakthy's face disappeared into the light as well, so the guardian could see nothing but white as it swallowed the world. 'I will revive this world, and its people, and you will be reborn. The darkness will eventually come again, and if your heart is still strong and you require my aid, call for me with the name I have given you, and I will come.' Her voice faded slowly, echoing gently against the sound of humming light. 'Now walk on, my guardian and the guardian of Orisis, and remember that one soul alone cannot drive out the evil in this world.'

The guardian obeyed, and he felt himself vanish into the light.


End file.
